Buddhist Monk Explains Why You Feel Lost & Empty Inside

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   The phrase is, "If I was that other person, I'd be doing exactly the same as them." It was really interesting. I wrote about it in my last book. I, I've gone on stage and spoken about how transformative this phrase is for me because it, it makes you lead with compassion. If you think, "Hey, listen, if I was that person with their upbringing, their childhood, the bullying they had, um, the toxic first boss they had, I'd also view the world in the same way as they do. I'd be acting in exactly the same way as they are." And one of the common things that will come up for people is go, "Yeah, w- well, does that mean I just need to let people walk over me?" And I will say very similar to what you just said, which is, "No." But if you, if you have compassion as the energy behind it, you're not getting emotionally triggered, you're not going into stress states, you're more open to possibility. You're better able to change that situation because of your state. So it's not as if, if someone's behaving badly to you, that you're necessarily gonna tolerate it or accept it, or put up with it. But if you can actually change your energy in a much calmer and more rational way, you can actually deal with the situation.

2. GTGelong Thubten1:08

   Mm.

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:10

   Is that similar to what you're talking about?

4. GTGelong Thubten1:12

   Definitely. You, you, you are, um, not allowing people to abuse you. You are not allowing people to walk all over you, and of course, there are some situations where you, y- you should speak up, or some situations where you have to get away from that person or the situation because it's toxic and dangerous. But what is going on inside yourself in terms of blame, upset, anger, can that be transformed through forgiveness, through compassion? Because then eventually you can have a, a different relationship with that person or the situation-

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:49

   Mm

6. GTGelong Thubten1:49

   ... or your feelings about that situation by, yeah, sometimes putting yourself in the other person's shoes, and I think meditation helps you do that-

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:57

   Mm

8. GTGelong Thubten1:57

   ... because it helps you to see the human condition, how it is. E- everybody has minds that are, um, somehow, um, influenced by habits and negativity that we don't seem to know what to do with, and so when we see that about ourselves and others, it creates more of a compassionate acceptance.

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:18

   Mm. Going from burnout in New York to joining a monastery in Scotland and then still being a monk 30 years later seems to be quite an extreme way to deal with burnout. So would you say, looking back on your life, you have had a tendency to extremes, like being the party animal in New York and then a few months later being a monk in a, in remote Scotland? And if so, could we say that these extremes are potentially problematic in how we interact with life?

10. GTGelong Thubten2:56

    That's a very good question, and many of my friends said to me, "Well, here we go again. He's totally extreme. He's now joined a monastery." Some of them thought I'd joined a cult, and should they come and rescue me? And then they researched it and found out it's not a cult. But yeah, I would say that there was this going from one extreme to the other. I, I'm a party animal, then I'm a monk, and y- yes, that, that is a very extreme way to deal with burnout. But what changed for me was once the burnout had been addressed in some way and I started to feel healthier and more calm, there then was the question of should I now finish my year and then go back to New York and carry on with the life that I was living? Um, but then I decided to try another year. I thought, "I'll just, I'll just, I'll, I'll take vows for a second year." And during my second year as a monk, I went into a solitary meditation retreat for several months, think it was nine months, and it was during that retreat that I started to really think about what Buddhism meant to me and what being a monk meant to me. And the s- the philosophy of Buddhism was, especially the compassion part, the philosophy of compassion, was starting to really get under my skin in, in a very good way, and then the decision to stay a monk came from a very different place. The decision to become a monk came from a desperate, broken place. The decision to then carry on and eventually take life vows came from a place of feeling this, this philosophy and this way of living really resonates for me at a very deep level, at a cellular level, and if I stay and do this long term, I really got a feeling that this would help me and also give me the chance to help others.

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:41

    Mm.

12. GTGelong Thubten4:41

    So I think my motivation for what I was doing started to come from a deeper place, and then it didn't feel extreme at all.

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:48

    Yeah.

14. GTGelong Thubten4:49

    And, and being a monk doesn't feel remotely extreme. And pe- people when they meet me and they say, "Oh, you're a monk," they often want to know, "What are you not allowed to do?" [laughs] Be- because their, their, their, their fascination is here's somebody who's chosen a life of celibacy, for example, um, and also I don't drink or smoke or anything-

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:09

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16. GTGelong Thubten5:53

    And so maybe that's all they see at first. "Oh, he's not allowed to do certain things." What maybe they don't understand and then they discover when they, when they talk to me more is-That it's a life that I find incredibly relaxing and freeing and, uh, healthy for myself, but also it's given me a way to communicate with others. I've always been a communicator. I've always wanted to share some kind of message, and here's a message I can share now, so it doesn't feel remotely extreme.

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:20

    Yeah. It's so interesting that the energy that got you to become a monk in the first place is different from the energy that got you to continue.

18. GTGelong Thubten6:28

    Definitely.

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:29

    And I, I think a lot about human behavior, initially through the lens of my patients. You know, why is it that people struggle to make change? Is a behavior, let's say, I don't know, alcohol for example, always bad? Is scrolling on social media always bad? Like, where I've got to in my view on human behavior is that it's not necessarily the behavior where we can determine if it's problematic or not, it's the energy underlying the behavior. And, and even saying problematic is possibly not the best word to describe it, but I think the energy behind it, for example, like alcohol. If, if the energy behind you having a half glass of red wine is to connect you with your friends that you haven't seen for a long time and i- in that setting, I think that's a very different situation than if you're using half a bottle of wine every night to numb the loneliness and frustration with your life. I actually think that the effects on you is gonna be very, very different. And so it's really interesting that maybe you needed that kind of running away energy to get you into the monastery. But that wasn't gonna keep you there. You had to change that.

20. GTGelong Thubten7:47

    And also my, my relationship with intoxicants, uh, I started to look at it at a more subtle level, which is through giving up all intoxicants, um, I s- I started to work with the idea that if you are using alcohol, for example, just to help you relax, there's something in you loses the ability to do it for yourself. It's too easy to, to, to give the power of relaxation away to an external substance.

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:19

    Mm.

22. GTGelong Thubten8:19

    And when you give all of that up, you start to dis- discover more power in yourself. You just-

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:24

    Mm

24. GTGelong Thubten8:24

    ... start to discover places you can go to internally f- and from there you can-

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:29

    Mm-hmm

26. GTGelong Thubten8:29

    ... you can feel relaxed and happy. So it gives you more autonomy and more, more strength.

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:34

    What other intoxicants did you have to give up?

28. GTGelong Thubten8:39

    Many.

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:40

    [laughs] What, caffeine? [laughs]

30. GTGelong Thubten8:42

    Oh, no, I, I, I, I do enjoy coffee. [laughs]

Episode duration: 24:20